With our pilgrimage over, we became tourists for the day. After sleeping in (until 7am) we had a breakfast of Croissants, butter and jam. Allison also ate a hard boiled egg that she’d saved from the night before (or was it two?).

We then walked the short walk through Martigny

and caught the train to Geneva.

If you look on a map, this doesn’t really look to be that far of a distance but since this was a Swiss rail line, it went the long way around Lac Leman to avoid entering France. This route however allowed Allison and I to relive moments from the Via Francigena.

The vineyards around the lake are beautiful, but the rainy day put a damper on things <pun intended>. Regardless we passed Lausanne and soon entered Geneva.

We stowed our packs at the train station lockers and made a slushy walk to the main cathedral.

This cathedral ranks as one of the top attractions of the city but none of us have any idea why. It was spartan and somewhat uninteresting.

But its history and its key position in the Protestant Reformation gave it some appeal. After the city declared itself Protestant for example, the altar of the church was stripped of all its statuary and ornamentation, and instead a simple altar containing only a Bible was placed there instead.

After visiting the cathedral, we were going to visit a museum, but instead got hungry and decided to splurge for one meal in the city (our lodging has a kitchen so the other meals will be store bought). We had a fondue with a Raclette starter. It was delicious but honestly the fondue we made ourselves in Grindelwald was better. It was also too much, so we left very full and VERY thirsty from all the salt in the cheese.

Next we went back to the train station and recovered our packs and made the short trip to our apartment via a tram. All public transport in the city is free for us because the apartment came with a surprise bonus of a free access pass compliments of the Geneva Tourism Board.

After checking in to our lodging we headed back out to fulfill a pilgrimage tradition for Allison and I. She walks for months in the same two sets of clothes. So it’s only fair that I treat her to some new articles when we reach our destination.

Now this may seem great to some of you but that’s just because you don’t know Allison well enough. She HATES shopping for clothes. But still she enjoys the new outfit after the shopping is done. Mark considers it a personal challenge to persevere until I settle on an outfit. Basically, he is more stubborn than I am.

All that was left of our day was a quick grocery run where we bought salad ingredients and a tiny bit of beef to add to the salad.

As I turned out, I ended up adding in some spicy mustard to the sautéing beef and garlic. That made a very yummy sauce if I say so myself.

Well that was our day. Tomorrow we will hit that museum, and Nadine will leave for her airport hotel.   She has an 0-dark-hundred flight on Thursday.